JUGOSLAVIA-TEN YEARS AFTER
raw materials for her textile and other
industries, to which purchases the United
States contributes 4 per cent.
Zagreb, Croatia's capital, ranks among
the foremost of Jugoslavia's industrial cen
ters. The spirit of progressiveness speaks
in its fine public buildings, its handsome
squares, its humming activity, its frank
determination to keep Croatia prominent
on the commercial and political map.
The last-named characteristic runs true
to form with Zagreb's history. Its civic
annals began in the thirteenth century,
when it was created "a free town of the
king" in acknowledgment of its defense
against the Tatars. . Two centuries later
the Turks advanced against Zagreb, but
with no better luck. In the nineteenth
century it centered Croatia's movement
directed against the Hapsburgs' attempted
Teutonization of the country. And so it
is not without significance that there stands
in Zagreb the statue of that Slavonian
priest who became, as Bishop Strossmayer,
the father of the Jugoslav national move
ment.
One might multiply proofs that that
movement has amply justified itself. Yet
Jugoslavia still has her problems, extrater
ritorial as well as internal. Into her melt
ing pot have gone three peoples, Slavic
in tongue yet differing in culture--differ
rences which still express themselves in
the form of sectionalism. But, with Jugo
slavia's already substantial progress in
evidence, few can doubt that she will
achieve unification.
Zagreb consists of a once-fortified hill
town and, beneath it, a modern complex
of commerce. The turmoil dies away as
you ascend hillward over a winding street
that enters as curious a portal as ever di
vided a city's bustling present from its
mellow past. It is the vaulted shell of
what was anciently part of a castle and is
now a street shrine. Through its dim
ness glows a starlike galaxy of altar can
dles, revealing icons and bowed worship
ers, as among a press of footfarers you
pass in at its one archway, then regain
daylight through its other.
Beyond, all is muted peacefulness. There
is not a street car, scarcely a shop front,
to mar the etchinglike scene of St. Mark's
Square, with its Gothic church, palaces,
and Town Hall-a scene which for centu
ries has witnessed the determining of
Croatia's destinies. Then, issuing from
the square, you find yourself on a tree
vistaed promenade, from which vantage
point among the upper town's past you
survey the panorama of the lower town's
busy present.
Descend into that present and you can
scarcely miss finding yourself among one
of the most picturesque market scenes in
Europe. It is that of the great Jelacid
Square, ranged from end to end with
planks on trestles, with every kind of
farm product heaping the planks, with
festally costumed Croatian women at each
stall, and with a milling mass of basket
carrying housewives - a cash-and-carry
spectacle involving a thousand or so par
ticipants (see pages 291, 309).
ZAGREB'S MARKET A RESPLENDENT
SIGHT
A market is just a market, but Za
greb's more nearly resembles a civic fete,
performed in fancy costume and super
vised by a skilled stage director. Each of
the hundreds of Croatian stall women is
adorned in gorgeous, hand-woven raiment,
including short skirts and white stockings
on plump legs, whose calves are encircled
by coquettish, cherry-colored bows.
Why these early-rising, produce-toting
peasants from outlying farms thus begay
themselves daily as for a festival remains
for sober-clothed Westerners a mystery,
for this gala sight is staged every day of
the year. At dawn municipal employees
set up the stalls. For six hours the spec
tacle goes on. Then at noon, as if a wand
had been waved, everything-stalls, prod
uce, costumed peasants-melts away. The
square changes like a stage denuded of
scenery and the rapt onlooker wakes as
from illusionment.
THROUGH "BEER IN THE BUD" COUNTRY
From Zagreb we circled through Slo
venia, that lovely, sub-Alpine province of
a remarkably diversified kingdom. Now
we penetrated a region of trellises laden
with luxuriant vines, whose aroma re
vealed that we were in a hop country
"beer in the bud."
Now hops gave way
to orchards and vineyards, and these to
newly furrowed fields, strikingly black
among Slovenia's bright-green pastures:
and always the air grew keener, and the
multitudinous streams sang more shrilly
305